


forgetting the ghost that’s haunting you, as a ghost yourself

by acosmic



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acosmic/pseuds/acosmic
Summary: Anastasia and Kadoc: vignettes of before, during, and after.
Relationships: Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova | Caster & Kadoc Zemlupus, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova | Caster/Kadoc Zemlupus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	forgetting the ghost that’s haunting you, as a ghost yourself

**Author's Note:**

> for flap, partially because of your birthday (although this is late for that), partially because you always encouraging me, but mostly because you're my friend
> 
> the sickness mentioned at the very beginning is referencing when the real life OTMA got the measles
> 
> all of the chapters are going to be short enough that it'll look better to view all of them at once

There was a time when she had gotten sick—not chills or fever or aches that’d be cured by bed rest and fresh air after a few-or-a-tiny-bit-more days. The imprecision of her memory tells her this: their little quartet had all caught _it_ , except she couldn’t remember what _it_ was; they had all been told to shave their heads to prevent spread or something or other by the doctor or their mother or whomever; Anastasia had begged them not to do it, a vanity that she didn’t realize she had until it was gone; and then she had woken up.

Her hair is there.

Her hair is there, lovely like moonlight, like a clean blanket of snow; lovely unlike the rest of the Lostbelt. Then she pulls it, hard enough that it pulls her head forward and makes her clench her teeth, and considers getting scissors, because this isn’t the right reality. She can make amends, align herself with the memory that she hadn’t lived through.

She had never gotten sick. She had never gotten her head shaved. Flip a coin on right or wrong, Yes or no. This is not right. This is.

Anastasia gets out of bed.

* * *

Kadoc is awake, despite the time. Because of the time. Either one, she’s fine with, because she wants him to do something. She won’t say, _entertain me_ , but she will say, _follow me_ , without telling him where they’re going.

There’s a study, with bookshelves along the walls, a desk piled with papers in one corner and a piano in the other. It’s not an elaborate looking piano, but it looks well-made. There’s a heaviness to the movement when Anastasia lifts up the keylid.

“I thought there was only the court musician's piano,” Kadoc says.

“The issue is that this one isn’t fit for a ‘court musician.’ Too useless to be used, but too burdensome to get rid of. I suppose there are two pianos left in this world but effectively one.” She turns on her heel to ask Kadoc, who stands still in the doorway, "Can you play?"

"Can't you? Why do you need me to do it?"

"This isn't about me. This isn’t about anyone else besides you." She has that expression where it looks like she’s apathetic but, if paying attention, there’s an intensity in her eyes and her voice and her everything and Kadoc looks away.

“I can play,” he says, resigned. “But not well.”

A short list of instruments that Kadoc Zemlupus has tried to pick up and failed to excel at: piano, violin, guitar, bass. There’d be certificates of recognition in recitals, but no gold, of course.

Of course.

And, of course, he then gave up on it. Because he was a mage. Better to focus on his own mediocrity in one field than waste your life away on everything.

“I won’t ask you to dance again, so play me a song.”

When Kadoc doesn’t move, she grabs him by the wrists and pulls him to the piano bench. When he doesn’t sit, she pushes down on his shoulders.

He puts his fingers on the keys. Anastasia waits, because she is waiting for Kadoc, and Kadoc waits, because he is waiting for any memory of music, the sort of thing you’d actually play on a piano. Back then, all the Beethoven and Bach and Schubert was buried under thrift store CDs, yellow sales stickers peeling slowly off.

The few notes he taps out sound horribly stilted, but he finishes with a sigh.

“Satisfied?” he asks her. Kadoc doesn’t lift his head to look up at her, because he thinks if he had his voice would’ve cracked.

In answer, Anastasia leans over him and pulls the piano’s fallboard down. Kadoc imagines the noise, the pain, whether it’d leave a scar, whether there’s any worth to him when he is ruined because his Servant made him play music and found it wanting, but his imagination pans out to nothing, because there’s only the cold touch of a human being.

With her hands on top of his, her palms facing up from catching the fallboard, Anastasia asks, “Were you scared?”

“Of course not.”

“I don’t mind you lying to seem brave, but you flinched.”

* * *

Kadoc walks Anastasia back to her room. He isn't a good enough judge to say whether the silence is companionable or awkward or anything at all beyond empty.

At the beginning, there was an unasked question about the necessity of her having her own bedroom but Anastasia had coolly held his gaze, daring him to bring it up, and Kadoc sighed and scratched his head, and that was that.

When she opens her bedroom’s door, she pauses to look behind her.

Kadoc’s face is hidden in shadows so Anastasia can’t quite see his expression, although she can imagine the furrow in his brow, the steadying hand gripping his chest in order to make his words come out cool and clear. “Was it a nightmare?”

She says, “Worse,” and shuts the door silently behind her.


End file.
